


Don't You Remember?

by white_hart



Category: We Built This City - Starship (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:12:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3944947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_hart/pseuds/white_hart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marconi plays the mamba; what happens when cheesy 80s rock meets dystopia</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't You Remember?

The old people must remember what it used to be like, on Saturday nights. When there were bars all along the waterfront, bright lights reflected in the bay, people spilling out onto the pavement to smoke and talk and flirt and laugh, and always the beat pulsing out from inside. When the queues to get into the downtown clubs tailed all the way round the corner, and the nightbuses were full of happy, exhausted, drunk people, people who were even singing as they travelled home from their night out. When boys and girls thronged the dancefloors, keeping to their own groups at the start of the evening, gradually mixing and mingling and moving to dance together, maybe even dancing closer and closer as the night went on, maybe even leaving together when the last song had finished.

  
It was barely twenty years ago. The old people must remember.

  
But if they do, they don’t reminisce about it. It’s only sensible, really, when humming or whistling anything other than the approved martial music as you walk along the street is likely to get you picked up by the police (if you’re lucky) or the Security Force (if you aren’t), and where everyone has a friend who had a friend whose house was searched from top to bottom for illegal media because an overly public-spirited or downright vindictive neighbour thought that they were sashaying along the street just that bit too rhythmically. Just imagine what would happen if the police or the SF heard them talking about the old days! It’s not worth the risk, for a solid, upstanding citizen in their forties or fifties. After all, they have their families to think of.

  
The young people never knew those days, but that doesn’t stop them exchanging whispered speculation about what it might have been like when they’re safely out of the earshot of parents and teachers. For most of them, it’s just a phase, and by the time they’re approaching the age of citizenhood they’ve put all thoughts of banned music behind them, but there are always a few who are so gnawed by curiosity that they are driven to seek out the forbidden fruit and listen for themselves. Even the prospect of lengthy juvenile detention sentences and being branded as troublemakers and denied access to the higher education that’s the only way to get a good job doesn’t stop them seeking out the music, using encrypted connections to access webstreams from outside the city, listening secretly, through headphones with the volume turned low, late at night when everyone else is asleep.

  
And however hard the SF try, the pirate webradio stations and underground clubs are always one step ahead of them. Much as they’d like to, they can’t scan every file on every memory chip coming in to the city, and the real smugglers are never the ones who look like smugglers. They can decrypt the pirate station transmissions, given time, but by the time they’ve worked out where the broadcast is coming from nine times out of ten the pirates have moved on, to another address and a different set of encrypted servers, and even if the SF shut down a station there’ll be another one along to take its place soon enough.

  
As for the clubs…! You’d have thought that at least the security presence on the streets of the city would have been enough to put paid to those, but somehow the news is passed from mouth to mouth out of earshot of the authorities and every Saturday kids are sneaking out of their houses, down the fire escapes, over the roofs, running from shadow to shadow and ducking down alleys to avoid the patrols, converging on warehouses and cellars, school gyms and church halls, anywhere with a lock that can be picked and enough space to dance to the tunes the DJs play, never the same place twice. The clubs don’t start up until well after dark; by morning there’s no sign anyone was ever there, and if the parents struggle to get their kids up on Sunday morning, well, that’s teenagers for you.

  
Clubs come and go, of course. One month the Panther will be the cool place to be, next month it’s Lulu’s Lounge. A couple of years ago, the Velvet Room was huge, and who even remembers it now? Marconi’s, though, Marconi’s is a legend. Marconi’s has been going since the beginning. Marconi plays the best tunes, the newest imports and the oldest favourites. Everyone wants to be in on a Marconi’s night, but the secret is jealously guarded. No-one’s going to risk giving the time and place away to someone who might be a nark. Rumour has it that Marconi runs half the music smugglers bringing the tunes in to the city, that he – or she, because whatever people may assume no-one who’s admitting it has ever actually _spoken_ to Marconi, or seen anything other than the hooded figure behind the music station, which doesn’t really give away a lot about Marconi’s gender or age or race – is the person behind the time the soundsystem in City Hall was hacked and instead of the city’s anthem everyone heard a few bars of something so compelling and catchy it was almost impossible not to hum it for days after, that Marconi runs the resistance, but all anyone _really_ knows is that every Saturday night, rain or shine, somewhere in the city Marconi’s is packed with people, dancing the night away in defiance of the law and wishing the dawn would never come.


End file.
